Re: Disappearing emails - the cause?

On 16 Jan Rural Life Centre <info@...> wrote:

> When we started to use Messenger on Windows we soon experienced major
> crashes which Mark has tried to sort out.
> 
> They involved the loss of whole mail boxes (on two occasions the main
> inbox).
> 
> The symptoms are an endless cycle of invalid header in bin file and
> repairing group xxx messages. The way out is to quit and restart
> Messenger.
> 
> I think I have now identified the cause of the problem and wonder if
> anyone else has experienced the same?

Up until just over a month ago, I was still using the last version of
Gemini, MPro's precursor. From time to time I would get what you describe,
an endless cycle of invalid header in bin file and repairing group messages,
to end which I had to quit and restart Gemini.

I tracked the cause to a different source than you, however. In my case, I
firmly established that it was down to the actions of my anti-virus software
(AVG Free). On occasions, there would be a spam email sitting in Gemini,
which had arrived since the last daily AVG scan, containing an attached
virus or other exploit - it would invariably be sitting unoppened in the
Junk folder. The dialy AVG scan would find it, and remove the email, sending
it to the 'virus vault'. This had the effect of deleting a bin file from
Gemini, which then produced the symptoms when next trying to open the junk
folder.

I never bothered trying to get anything done about this as (a) it was always
the Junk folder, which was no great loss, and (b) my ISP started filtering
out most of the virus-containing spam, so the occurence became much less
frequent. I haven't had it happen since moving to MPro a little over a month
ago, but then AVG hasn't deleted a bin file out of MPRO yet. Since MPro
still uses the same bin and configuration etc files as Gemini, I presume it
will react the same as Gemini as and when AVG does find a virus in a spam
email in MPro, though.

I have occasionally started two instances of MPro and Gemini by mistake,
though, and have not seen a problem when I have done so.

I mention all this in case your problem is the same as mine, and down to
your anti-virus software deleting/moving bin files that contain viruses,
with the business of opening two instances of MPro only a coincidence. To be
sure, you might look at the log files of your anti-virus software, and see
if they mention finding and dealing with an MPro bin file, as mine do when
this happens.

David

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